Last night was the second of my slack key guitar lessons with Cyril Pahinui. I still can’t believe it. At the first session we received some papers with basic chords on them and then the rest of the class was a talk-story, one-man jam session. We were the audience.

Cyril would play a song and then talk about the old days with his Pop, Gabby Pahinui, and the people who came over to their house in Waimanalo to jam. They were all there. Atta Isaacs, Sonny Chillingworth, Peter Moon, Kui Lee—they would all drop by. And then he would play another song. Without realizing it, the class was getting a feel for the music.

Cyril said his father, Gabby, never sat down to teach him a chord or show him how to play. He just told Cyril to watch and listen. And he did. Eventually Cyril would get to accompany the guys in the background. He said he would wait and wait for somebody to say: “Okay, boy. You take ‘em.” Then he would play the lead for one turn. That was the highlight for him.

At the start of last night’s class, Cyril said that the earlier class—all 37 students—was able to play two songs when they went home. He handed out sheets of paper with the words to the songs Puamana and Kaulana Kawaihae. He played and sang them once and told us where to write the chord changes. Then we all played it together a few times. In a short time, we had enough of it to go home and be able to get a lot better with practice.

I’m going to take out my guitar now….